Hi Sturgeon, my thoughts exactly!
I tested 4 or 5 tracks (48k HE-AAc v2 versus 128k MP3) and couldn't believe the quality, fantastic!
I'm halfway through converting my entire CD collection, half of which will now fit on my N95 8GB 😊
The H.264 (a.k.a. MPEG-4 Part 10 and AVC) Bible
Superb isn't it!
s.
GordonShowers wrote:Hi Sturgeon, my thoughts exactly!I tested 4 or 5 tracks (48k HE-AAc v2 versus 128k MP3) and couldn't believe the quality, fantastic!
I'm halfway through converting my entire CD collection, half of which will now fit on my N95 8GB 😊
Yeah, this is why I'm "pushing" HE-AAC v2 this hard in my latest, related article (Radio Stream Transcoding Bible; see http://www.allaboutsymbian.com/forum//forum/thread/68414/ ) too. Hope the Nokia folks are actively monitoring this thread and add (SHOUTcast) HE-AAC v2 support to Nokia Internet Radio as well. After all, the decoder is already present in the same device.
UPDATE (01/03/2008): let me also present the standard benchmark results of the QVGA, 400 MHz Samsung + ATi-based HTC Trinity / P3600. This chart belongs to Section 1.4.5.4, �QVGA Pocket PC�s and MS Smartphones�.
Also note that I�ve made some CPU usage tests to find out how the power usage on Samsung-based Windows Mobile handsets and PDA�s increase with increasing CPU usage. The results are pretty good: pretty much close to the (excellent) Nokia N95 results shown in Section �1.1.1.1 Battery life considerations� and WAY better than the Intel Xscale PXA-27x figures. These results can be found in my Radio Stream Transcoding Bible, in the �UPDATE (01/03/2008)� section at the bottom.
Can anyone tell if I can find a program that converts to AVC but with a option to add subtitle? Something similar to PocketDivxEncoder but for AVC.
Thanks in advance
UPDATE (01/25/2009):
1. CorePlayer 1.3 has been released for both Windows Mobile and Symbian in the meantime. I've made some very thorough tests on it to find out whether it's faster at playing back H.264 than the 1.2.x series or whether there is H.264-specific decoding acceleration support of the Xscale 3xx series (tested this with the 310-based HP iPAQ 210) or the TI OMAP 2xxx-series (tested this on the Nokia N95 equipped with an OMAP 2420), two chip(set)s announced as ones that might receive hardware support in the future. Unfortunately, there isn't. Nevertheless, if you have a previous version of CorePlayer, you will want to update to the new version � it has much better YouTube support. For example, it supports iterating over all the search / category results and also supports the latest YouTube video formats. Unfortunately, HE-AACv2 and, on Symbian S60, WMV support is still painfully missing � I really-really hope they'll be added before long.
2. I've also played a bit with the latest (1.8.5.0) version of the desktop version of CoreAVC, the desktop decoder for H.264 and directly compared it to the recently-released DivX Player 7.0, which, among other things, has a brand new H.264 decoder. I've also thrown the latest (0.9.8a) version of VideoLan VLC player to see how the two compare to the well-established (but not very efficient, H.264 playback-wise), free, all-in-one video player.
All my tests have been conducted on a 2 GHz IBM ThinkPad t42p with a Pentium-M Dothan running at 2 GHz, 2GB of RAM and an UXGA screen, under the recently-released build 7000 of Windows 7 beta. I've run the tests in full screen mode. (Note that, unlike with, say, the IBM ThinkPad a31p and HP TC1100, video acceleration is fully supported on the t42p. Without it, watching high-resolution videos would be a painful experience.)
I've mostly used (torrented) 720p material like Ratatouille (video encoded at 1280x528 @ 4380 Kbps, bilingual audio left at the default 640kbps AC3) and Harry Potter and the Chamber of Secrets, encoded using very similar parameters. Of the former, I especially took care of checking switching between the two soundtracks (English / German); of the latter, I paid special attention to the jerkiness of the animation at the end of the movie, starting at 2:31:05. In addition, I've thrown in some 1024*768*15 fps Canon IXUS SD960 video clips encoded by the latest (version 2009 build .35), highly recommended SUPER (Simplified Universal Player Encoder & Renderer) using 1200 kbps, 15 fps video and LLC-AAC 64 kbps 44 kHz mono audio.
The results are as follows: VLC, as one could easily guess, was by far the slowest to render. It just couldn't produce enjoyable results � the 720p videos stuttered so bad. (The much simpler 1024*768*15fps videos were, of course, played back without problems.)
The free(!) DivX Player was much-much better. It delivered far less stuttering. A quick note: it, by default, doesn't support AC3. Therefore, you'll want to install AC3filter [latest, tested version: 1.51]. Note that, as is explained in section 4.10 HERE, you'll also want to do this if you use other players and find the audio volume low while playing back movies with an AC3 soundtrack; this also applies to CoreAVC and any compliant player like the built-in Windows Media Player or, in newer Windows versions, Windows Media Center. (Note that these do play back AC3 soundtracks � at least under Windows 7 � without installing any codecpack; just pretty quietly) Just install the driver and, under XP, follow the just-linked tutorial; under Vista / Windows 7, go to All Programs / AC3Filter / AC3Filter Config and raise the gain level.
CoreAVC was still (a bit) better than DivX Player. While the difference between CoreAVC and DivX Player was certainly much-much lower than between VLC and DivX Player, I do think it's still worth paying for the standard version of CoreAVC (unfortunately, the Professional version still doesn't support hardware acceleration and it'll unlikely receive any, based on the comments HERE) if you want to minimize CPU utilization.
Note that I've tried very hard to remove (or reduce) stuttering in all players. In CoreAVC, setting "Deblocking" to "Skip always" from the default "Standard" didn't seem to have any effect at all � the video, with very fast panning / action, occassionally stuttered, while the CPU usage, interestingly, remained around 30-40%. In Divx Player, under Tools / Preferences / Video, the "Post-processing mode" drop-down list turned out to be uneditable � it is set to "Custom deblocking". Finally, I didn't really bother with VLC as it was bad enough and in no way recommended for H.264 playback. If you absolutely must use a free H.264 player (and can't shell out $8 for the Standard edition of CoreAVC), go for the (in this regard, much superior) DivX Player 7 instead.
3. I've found the above-mentioned SUPER (Simplified Universal Player Encoder & Renderer) a very-very easy-to-use tool to convert your stuff into H.264. While in my previous H.264 bible I recommended Nero Recode for the task (because of its simplicity), now, I tell you to go for SUPER instead. It has a very simple and logical user interface you'll learn in a minute: no need to use x264 (the famous encoder) from the command line any more, with a lot of cryptic options and commands. You can do the same right from SUPER, without having to read a lot of manuals on the different switches of x264. Also, it's capable of batch processing: you just drop some source files in it and, after setting the output audio/video/container parameters, just start transcoding. It's really easy and the encoder itself is, according to most people, both better and faster than that of Nero � and, yes, it's completely free!
Note that SUPER, being "just" a front-end to some command-line codecs like x264, doesn't support cutting / editing video files before being re-encoded (transcoded). For this task, I recommend SolveigMM Video Splitter the most because it's capable of cutting videos without re-encoding them. This way, it's both very fast and doesn't introduce any kind of quality decrease. Unfortunately, it isn't free (it costs 35 euros); however, it's well worth the price if you need to cut / edit video files often. Note that the 21-day evaluation version is completely usable and has no restrictions. It's perfectly usable unless you have MKV files as source � "traditional" AVI, MP3, WMV, WMA etc. files are all supported. Note that DVD's are also supposed to be supported; however, I've repeatedly received "Can't start trim process (The parameter is incorrect HRESULT: 0x80070057)" messages as of version 2.1.901.22, upon trying to edit / trim VOB files from DVD � without, of course, protection. WMV, AVI etc. files worked without problems.
UPDATE (01/25/2009):
1. CorePlayer 1.3 has been released for both Windows Mobile and Symbian in the meantime. I've made some very thorough tests on it to find out whether it's faster at playing back H.264 than the 1.2.x series or whether there is H.264-specific decoding acceleration support of the Xscale 3xx series (tested this with the 310-based HP iPAQ 210) or the TI OMAP 2xxx-series (tested this on the Nokia N95 equipped with an OMAP 2420), two chip(set)s announced as ones that might receive hardware support in the future. Unfortunately, there isn't. Nevertheless, if you have a previous version of CorePlayer, you will want to update to the new version – it has much better YouTube support. For example, it supports iterating over all the search / category results and also supports the latest YouTube video formats. Unfortunately, HE-AACv2 and, on Symbian S60, WMV support is still painfully missing – I really-really hope they'll be added before long.
2. I've also played a bit with the latest (1.8.5.0) version of the desktop version of CoreAVC, the desktop decoder for H.264 and directly compared it to the recently-released DivX Player 7.0, which, among other things, has a brand new H.264 decoder. I've also thrown the latest (0.9.8a) version of VideoLan VLC player to see how the two compare to the well-established (but not very efficient, H.264 playback-wise), free, all-in-one video player.
All my tests have been conducted on a 2 GHz IBM ThinkPad t42p with a Pentium-M Dothan running at 2 GHz, 2GB of RAM and an UXGA screen, under the recently-released build 7000 of Windows 7 beta. I've run the tests in full screen mode. (Note that, unlike with, say, the IBM ThinkPad a31p and HP TC1100, video acceleration is fully supported on the t42p. Without it, watching high-resolution videos would be a painful experience.)
I've mostly used (torrented) 720p material like Ratatouille (video encoded at 1280x528 @ 4380 Kbps, bilingual audio left at the default 640kbps AC3) and Harry Potter and the Chamber of Secrets, encoded using very similar parameters. Of the former, I especially took care of checking switching between the two soundtracks (English / German); of the latter, I paid special attention to the jerkiness of the animation at the end of the movie, starting at 2:31:05. In addition, I've thrown in some 1024*768*15 fps Canon IXUS SD960 video clips encoded by the latest (version 2009 build .35), highly recommended SUPER (Simplified Universal Player Encoder & Renderer) using 1200 kbps, 15 fps video and LLC-AAC 64 kbps 44 kHz mono audio.
The results are as follows: VLC, as one could easily guess, was by far the slowest to render. It just couldn't produce enjoyable results – the 720p videos stuttered so bad. (The much simpler 1024*768*15fps videos were, of course, played back without problems.)
The free(!) DivX Player was much-much better. It delivered far less stuttering. A quick note: it, by default, doesn't support AC3. Therefore, you'll want to install AC3filter [latest, tested version: 1.51]. Note that, as is explained in section 4.10 HERE, you'll also want to do this if you use other players and find the audio volume low while playing back movies with an AC3 soundtrack; this also applies to CoreAVC and any compliant player like the built-in Windows Media Player or, in newer Windows versions, Windows Media Center. (Note that these do play back AC3 soundtracks – at least under Windows 7 – without installing any codecpack; just pretty quietly) Just install the driver and, under XP, follow the just-linked tutorial; under Vista / Windows 7, go to All Programs / AC3Filter / AC3Filter Config and raise the gain level.
CoreAVC was still (a bit) better than DivX Player. While the difference between CoreAVC and DivX Player was certainly much-much lower than between VLC and DivX Player, I do think it's still worth paying for the standard version of CoreAVC (unfortunately, the Professional version still doesn't support hardware acceleration and it'll unlikely receive any, based on the comments HERE) if you want to minimize CPU utilization.
Note that I've tried very hard to remove (or reduce) stuttering in all players. In CoreAVC, setting "Deblocking" to "Skip always" from the default "Standard" didn't seem to have any effect at all – the video, with very fast panning / action, occassionally stuttered, while the CPU usage, interestingly, remained around 30-40%. In Divx Player, under Tools / Preferences / Video, the "Post-processing mode" drop-down list turned out to be uneditable – it is set to "Custom deblocking". Finally, I didn't really bother with VLC as it was bad enough and in no way recommended for H.264 playback. If you absolutely must use a free H.264 player (and can't shell out $8 for the Standard edition of CoreAVC), go for the (in this regard, much superior) DivX Player 7 instead.
3. I've found the above-mentioned SUPER (Simplified Universal Player Encoder & Renderer) a very-very easy-to-use tool to convert your stuff into H.264. While in my previous H.264 bible I recommended Nero Recode for the task (because of its simplicity), now, I tell you to go for SUPER instead. It has a very simple and logical user interface you'll learn in a minute: no need to use x264 (the famous encoder) from the command line any more, with a lot of cryptic options and commands. You can do the same right from SUPER, without having to read a lot of manuals on the different switches of x264. Also, it's capable of batch processing: you just drop some source files in it and, after setting the output audio/video/container parameters, just start transcoding. It's really easy and the encoder itself is, according to most people, both better and faster than that of Nero – and, yes, it's completely free!
Note that SUPER, being "just" a front-end to some command-line codecs like x264, doesn't support cutting / editing video files before being re-encoded (transcoded). For this task, I recommend SolveigMM Video Splitter the most because it's capable of cutting videos without re-encoding them. This way, it's both very fast and doesn't introduce any kind of quality decrease. Unfortunately, it isn't free (it costs 35 euros); however, it's well worth the price if you need to cut / edit video files often. Note that the 21-day evaluation version is completely usable and has no restrictions. It's perfectly usable unless you have MKV files as source – "traditional" AVI, MP3, WMV, WMA etc. files are all supported. Note that DVD's are also supposed to be supported; however, I've repeatedly received "Can't start trim process (The parameter is incorrect HRESULT: 0x80070057)" messages as of version 2.1.901.22, upon trying to edit / trim VOB files from DVD – without, of course, protection. WMV, AVI etc. files worked without problems.
4. Still speaking of desktop Windows, I’ve also tested the video / audio streaming offers to be able to save streaming or non-streaming content. You might also want to read the following section if you ever wondered how you can save for example streaming WMV videos, MP3 broadcasts and the like.
First, if you’re watching a non-live source (that is, pre-produced videos like those of YouTube), in a Web browser, there is chance it’s sent to you in Flash format. (Most video sites like YouTube use flash.) The easiest way to save these videos is using Opera as your main browser and navigating to \Users\username\AppData\Local\Opera\Opera 10 Preview\profile\cache4\ in Vista/W7 (in XP, change the leading “Users” to “Documents and Settings”) and, before navigating to the page containing the video, just entirely delete the contents of this directory. Then, you’ll easily spot the FLV videos downloaded to the cache upon navigating to the page with an inline videos and, then, starting to play it. Remember to rename the videos to something.FLV. These FLV files can be directly played back by, for example, the free and (unless you want to play back H.264) excellent VideoLan VLC player.
Most of the Flash-based video sources (YouTube, Google Video etc.) allow for quickly finding their FLV videos this way. Note that the above-explained way of finding them also works with Internet Explorer; however, then, you’ll need to make some searches with, say, Total Commander’s built-in file search routine (Alt-F7) unless you’re ready to traverse all the (numerous) subdirectories IE creates. This is why I recommend Opera for this task (too – after all, Opera is an excellent browser worth switching to not only because of this.) I’ve found only one exception – a regional TV broadcaster “ATV” (an example video is HERE), which uses some special, non-caching format I could only save with WMRecorder 12.3+ (but not with previous versions, not even 12.1).
Streaming video formats are another question. WMV, which is, today, the most commonly used (see for example the direct TV stream library HERE) format, saving the stream is way more complicated. With some (few) WMV streams (offering only pre-recorded stuff), you can just create a HTML file pointing to the WMV server / file you can easily get if you examine the page source for the original address and just trying to save the contents with a right click. With real live streams, however, this won’t work – then, you’ll need to use a third-party app. In my tests, WMRecorder has turned out to be the best in this respect when operated in ADA mode. Make sure you give the trial version a try to see whether your particular hardware configuration is supported so that it can run in ADA mode. It works wonderfully on both my HP TC1100 and IBM ThinkPad t42p (2373W6M) under both Windows 7 and Windows XP – and also on my IBM ThinkPad a31p (2653AG9) under XP (haven’t checked it under Windows 7 on my a31p). Note that, under Windows 7 on my t42p, I’m always receiving (with version 12.1; haven’t checked the latest, 12.4 version in this respect) “URL Finder has stopped working” errors; nevertheless, it does catch streaming download initializations issued before the URL finder being killed. And, if you do encounter URL Finder problems, just close and restart WMRecorder.
Its nice when people do research for others. however by the end of teh article i was finding that there was too much work involved in using avc. Ive tried using it before but gave problems. but since my n-95 ive installer xvid player on handset so can pretty much watch all torrented avi's when i cant be bothered to convert.
But even then i got great converter application. very small install and simple to use. which simply converts all movies i want in batch to fit screen size best. and its really damn quick. no messing with settings (or simply choose a different size profile if i need) and no loss of viewing quality.
i guess untill avc becomes mainstream its not worth the effort as ill have to convert from avi (dixx xvid) to avc?